A new measurement of the altitude dependence of the atmospheric muon intensity

Abstract

We present a new measurement of atmospheric muons made during an ascent of the High Energy Antimatter Telescope balloon experiment. The muon charge ratio mu+/mu- as a function of atmospheric depth in the momentum interval 0.3-0.9 GeV/c is presented. The differential mu- intensities in the 0.3-50 GeV/c range and for atmospheric depths between 4-960 g/cm^2 are also presented. We compare these results with other measurements and model predictions. We find that our charge ratio is ~1.1 for all atmospheric depths and is consistent, within errors, with other measurements and the model predictions. We find that our measured mu- intensities are also consistent with other measurements, and with the model predictions, except at shallow atmospheric depths.

To appear in Physical Review D